THE CROWN: THE STRANDS FIT TOGETHER
Common sense was important in a circumstantial case, said Crown prosecutor Ben Vanderkolk.
The case against Ewen Kerry Macdonald was circumstantial, there was no eyewitness.
Therefore, Mr Vanderkolk urged the jury of 11 not to lose their common sense when sifting through the evidence presented during the four-week trial in the High Court at Wellington.
"Do not be drawn into a discussion around whether each strand of the Crown case has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Judge them collectively," said Mr Vanderkolk.
"Do not let go of your common sense. It will serve you well in this case."
The Crown says that the week before Scott Guy was gunned down in his driveway, Macdonald was confronted with the possibility of more upheaval on the family farm, Byreburn.
Scott's parents, Bryan and Joanne Guy, had returned from a farming conference with new ideas of how to make money, and Macdonald saw his future eroding.
He had already experienced change once, when Mr Guy returned to Feilding in 2004 with his wife, Kylee.
A few years later, Mr Guy said he wanted to take over the family farm with responsibilities - and money - from the farm now divided up.
The brothers-in-law had never been on the same page with regard to the farm.
With a "deep-seated resentment", Macdonald embarked on a campaign of intimidation to try to drive Scott and Kylee Guy from the farm. He admits to torching a house, committing arson, and later vandalising the new home the couple was building.
"Words fail to describe the wanton destruction," said Mr Vanderkolk. Graffiti was scrawled on the home and the Crown alleges he wrote "poisonous" notes sent to Mrs Guy.
All this had failed.
So when more changes at the farm were mooted in July 2010, the Crown says Macdonald "got it in his head" to commit murder - a crime Mr Vanderkolk told the jury was planned and "intensely personal".
The Crown said Macdonald was a meticulous planner on the farm, and knew Mr Guy's routine when rising to milk the cows. He closed the gates at the driveway of 293 Aorangi Rd, then lay in wait by the fence.
Forced to get out of his ute to open the gates, Mr Guy was silhouetted against the headlights around 4.43am on July 8.
At that moment, the Crown says Macdonald stepped out of the darkness and shot his brother-in-law twice. The first blast to the throat was fatal.
Mr Vanderkolk said the scene was "littered with dive boot prints".
Macdonald took three labrador puppies and cycled the 1.46km back to his home at 147 Aorangi Rd.
When the alarm was raised that Mr Guy was dead, Macdonald joined others at the scene.
One witness thought the "gaping hole" in Mr Guy's neck was from a slash with a knife. Macdonald twice corrected him to say Mr Guy had been shot.
"The accused knew what killed Scott Guy before anyone else. He knew because he was the gunman," said Mr Vanderkolk.
He also had access to a double-barrelled shotgun on the Guy farm, which could be broken down and was not locked away.
Forensic testing showed the firearm could not be excluded as the murder weapon.
Macdonald bought a pair of Proline W375 dive boots from his father's store in Palmerston North, said Mr Vanderkolk, and used them on hunting trips.
It did not matter that his wife, Anna Macdonald, could not remember whether she threw them out when they moved house, as his mother, Marlene Macdonald, remembered the right boot was used to hide a spare house key.
The prosecutor believed Anna Macdonald's thinking had been "contaminated" by her husband after his arrest, when he asked her to "go away and think about it".
"Conscientious and honest as Anna Macdonald is, she does that, from that heart of gold. That is honourable on her part given the tightrope she has to walk in this trial," said Mr Vanderkolk.
Those were the "core fibres" of the case, said Mr Vanderkolk. Although it was cliched, or hackneyed to say the strands were woven together, Mr Vanderkolk said this was the case.
"Some may fall by the wayside, but taken together, they are woven together like the lives of this family.
"It doesn't go beyond Byreburn."
THE DEFENCE: EVIDENCE MATTERS - NOT ALLEGATIONS
Everything the Crown told the jury would be absolutely true if Ewen Macdonald was Scott Guy's killer, said Greg King.
But if he was innocent, then everything they heard would be wrong.
"It's not about allegations. It's about the evidence," said Mr King.
He said the four-hour closing address from the Crown contained only 20 minutes of evidence.
"And if you start from a presumption of guilt, you can make it fit."
Four aspects of evidence heard at the trial "severely and fatally undermined" the prosecution, said Mr King.
One of those was the timing of the gun blasts.
Four witnesses either heard something or were woken up. A neighbour, Bonnie Fredrikson, was awake and heard three bangs in quick succession. She estimated that was one hour before her alarm went off at 6am.
Another neighbour, Alison Rankin, heard a loud bang and thought it was a gunshot or a tree breaking. She looked at the clock and saw 5am. A third witness, Fraser Langbein, said something woke him and caused him to sit bolt upright. He said it was 5am.
A fourth witness, Derek Sharp, said he was woken up and then heard two bangs. His clock said 5am but he believed the clock was fast by 15 to 18 minutes, because of electrical interference - a theory later excluded by a defence witness.
"If this killing was at 5am, as all four witnesses say, there is no way in the world my client did this. He is under observation at that time.
"That's the cold, hard evidence that you have heard in this trial. Not allegations."
Mr King said the fact that Ms Fredrikson heard three gun shots - not two - also cleared his client.
"She heard bang, bang, bang. Even her flatmate [Mr Sharp] supports that. He heard something [which woke him up] and then heard two bangs."
Mr King said if three gun shots were heard in quick succession, there was no way the murder weapon could be the double-barrelled shotgun the Crown allege Macdonald fired.
A champion marksman commissioned by the defence took seven seconds to fire twice, reload, then fire the third shot.
Mr King said there were hundreds of thousands of 12-gauge shotguns and nothing forensically linked the double-barrelled shotgun to this crime.
A semi-automatic shotgun would be needed to fire three quick shots.
"If you start from guilty, then of course it makes sense. But if there are three bangs, the Crown case is fatally undermined."
Then there was a mystery sedan, said Mr King.
Car tyre tracks were found near the murder scene, close to a boot print impression.
Farm worker Matthew Ireland also told the court he saw a sedan driving down Aorangi Rd when he was waiting for Mr Guy at work.
Mr King said that car had never been identified despite all the publicity generated by the case and an intensive police investigation.
Also found nearby was a Winfield brand cigarette packet.
That particular brand was stolen in Palmerston North the night before the murder, by a burglar who had a shotgun.
"This may or may not be connected. But this trial is about being certain," said Mr King.
"Can you say 'I am certain, I am sure it was Ewen Macdonald?"'
Mr King said one good outcome of the murder investigation was that it led to the solving of unrelated crimes, including the theft of deer, vandalism and arson committed by Macdonald.
"There is no doubt Ewen Macdonald and Scott Guy had problems in the past. The culmination were these dreadful acts. But you need to be careful and not jump like the police did, from A to Z."
The acts Macdonald committed with Callum Boe were "ridiculous", "shameful" and "cowardly", said Mr King. But they were directed at property, not at people.
"There is a world of difference. Don't be seduced by the false logic that whoever did the damage committed the murder."
If that was the case, Mr King said there were a "million" ways to die on a farm and it did not make sense for Macdonald to kill Mr Guy in a premeditated fashion, as Callum Boe could link him to the previous crimes.
Mr King will finish his closing address this morning.
